North backpacker Alex Neale hit the headlines more than 8,500 miles from his Teesside home after snaps captured him cruising around - on the roof of a delivery van.

The hitchhiker was seen on the supermarket vehicle where he clung on for more than three miles.

News reports claimed he was wanted by police after the apparent “truck surfing” was broadcast across Oz by Channel Nine News.

But today the 28-year-old – Down Under on a working Visa – told the Sunday Sun he had been left desperately clinging to the truck roof after climbing aboard for a photo.

Alex said: “It was just meant to be a daft little picture of me on a van that had ‘Get Down’ printed on the side of it.

“I was completely unaware there was someone inside, then the van started to drive off and I tried to tap on the top of the cab but it had a big refrigeration unit on it so the driver obviously couldn’t hear me.

“After that I had no other choice than to ride it out until the vehicle had stopped. Then Channel Nine news got hold of a picture and made it font page news without even asking me what had happened.”

Alex Neale

Road safety groups criticised the pic and its then unnamed ‘surfer’. Edon Bell, the general manager of the Automobile Association of the Northern Territory, told Austrailia’s Nine News: “We certainly wouldn’t condone that behaviour. Ultimately there is already enough chaos on the road over the course of a weekend in terms of accidents.”

Alex was first spotted “truck surfing” near the Darwin Sailing Club in Fanny Bay, Darwin, on the north coast of Australia.

Nine News said hundreds of people had logged on to their website criticising Neale.

Last month a schoolboy earned the nickname “the Titch-hiker” after he hitched a lift home from school by riding on the tailbar of a 40-tonne lorry and was shopped by his own parents.

Sonny Wilson, 12, from Blackburn, Lancashire, was named and shamed by his own parents after he jumped on the back of the truck and clung on.